Zelda drives record quarter for Switch with 18.5m sales
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom drove a record quarter for Nintendo Switch, with the company confirming it sold 18.51 million units of the game as of June 30, 2023.
During the three-month period, global sell-through of first-party software reached the highest level for a first quarter since the Nintendo Switch launched in 2017, the company claimed.
The company also enjoyed a record first-quarter profit of 185.4bn yen ($1.294bn), which is up 82%, and surpasses the 2020 period when it released Animal Crossing: New Horizons and the start of covid-19 lockdowns boosted sales.
Driven by Zelda, Nintendo shipped 3.91m Switch units during the three-month period (short of the 5.68 managed in Q1 FY21), which is up 13.9% year-on-year and brings the life-to-date total to 129.53m. The vast majority of these (86%) were OLED models, including the special edition Tears of the Kingdom console, which launched in April.
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released on May 12 and sold 10 million copies worldwide in its first three days, according to Nintendo. That made it the fastest-selling game in the history of the series and the fastest-selling Nintendo game for any system in Europe and the Americas.
Nintendo said in its latest results that sell-through of this one title constituted approximately half of the first-party software sold this fiscal year.
*As of June 30, 2023 (compared to Mar 2023)
“Consumers who played the previous entry, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have been the primary driver, but as the weeks have passed, we have seen that a growing percentage of purchases are being made by consumers who have not yet played that title,” it said.
Nintendo forecasts it will sell 15 million consoles during the
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